The Marketing Concept

Marketing is a new science. What has been around previously is the art of salesmanship. Salesmanship is the art of manufacturing something and making another person want it. Marketing is the art of finding out what the other person wants, then manufacturing it for him. So the marketing writers distinguish between ‘selling concept’ and ‘marketing concept’. The selling concept assumes that resisting customers have to be persuaded by vigorous hard-selling techniques to buy non-essential goods or services the products are sold rather than bought. The ‘marketing concept’, on the contrary, assumes that the producer’s task is to find wants and to fill them. In other words you don’t sell what you make, but you make what will be bought. One of the greatest needs of managers is to understand and develop marketing programmes for their products and services. Business success is based on the ability to build a growing body of satisfied customers. Modern marketing programs are built around the “marketing concept” and performance, which directs managers to focus their efforts on identifying, satisfying, and following up the customer’s needs; all at a profit.

The marketing concept rests on the importance of customers to a firm and states that: 1) All company policies and activities should be aimed at satisfying customer needs, and 2) Profitable sales volume is a better company goal than maximum sales volume.

In a market of multiple choice, it is no longer sufficient to produce a product and show your customers that it satisfies one of their basic needs. You must show that it provides benefits other products fail to provide, that it can be supplied at a competitive price and above all, supplied reliably. But in this fast-changing world, competitors catch up more quickly than ever. Choice makes marketing work. The process of marketing must be managed.

Most people think of marketing management as finding enough customers for the company’s current output, but this is too limited a view. The organisation has a desired level of demand for its products. At any time, there may be no demand, adequate demand, irregular demand, or too much demand, and marketing management must find ways to deal with these different demand states. Marketing management is concerned not only with finding and increasing demand, but also with changing or even reducing it. Thus marketing management seeks to effect the level, timing, and nature of demand in a way that will help the organisation achieve its objectives. Simply put, marketing management is demand management.

We define marketing management as analysis, planning, implementation, and control of programs designed to create, build, and maintain beneficial objectives. Marketing managers include sales managers and salespeople, advertising executives, sales-promotion people, marketing researchers, product managers, pricing specialists and others.

To use the marketing concept, any business should:

1. Determine the needs of their customers (Marketing Research);

2. Analyze their competitive advantages (Marketing Strategy);

3. Select specific markets to serve (Target Marketing), and;

4. Determine how to satisfy those needs (Marketing Mix).

Think ahead

Why do you think companies conduct marketing research and testing in different markets?

Text 4.2 Scan the text and name different types of market research and main element of marketing mix.